From legendary storyteller and #1 bestseller Stephen King, whose "restless imagination is a power that cannot be contained" (The New York Times Book Review), comes a thrilling new novel about a good guy in a bad job.
Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He's a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he'll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong?
How about everything.
This spectacular can't-put-it-down novel is part war story, part love letter to small town America and the people who live there, and it features one of the most compelling and surprising duos in King fiction, who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. It's about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption.
You won't put this story down, and you won't forget Billy.
Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and an AT&T Audience Network original television series). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller.
His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, and Doctor Sleep are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.
"Stephen King hits the mark with assassination thriller Billy Summers...It's downright unfair, really: Not only is Stephen King an undisputed master of horror, he's a virtuosic crime novelist as well... King actually is as good at the hard-boiled prose--in this case, the tale of an extremely effective assassin trying to get out after one last job--as he is the scary stuff... King's known for his literary villains, yet in creating his killer title protagonist, he exquisitely gets into the mind of a hitman and roots around in there to figure out what kind of person would do wetwork, the loneliness involved for those who choose that as a career path and the effect it would have on friends and loved ones... The biggest crime here, however, would be missing out on Billy Summers and King's new reign as a pulp genius." - Brian Truitt, USA Today
"King's latest endeavor begins with a familiar premise: decorated veteran Billy Summers, a principled hit man on the eve of retirement, agrees to do one last job. Things go south in spectacularly bad fashion, making for a characteristically King thriller about luck, fate, and redemption. To see the undisputed master of horror shift into the realm of noir thrillers is proof that King can still surprise and astound us, all these decades later." - Esquire
"King has multiple novels in play here--thriller, at least two coming-of-age stories, and a knockout road novel--and he knits them together beautifully, never missing a stitch ... King has never been better than he is here at wrapping readers into a propulsive, many-tentacled narrative--complete with a perfectly orchestrated, moving ending." - Booklist
"[A] tripwire-taut thriller... King meticulously lays out the details of Billy's trade, his Houdini-style escapes, and his act to look simpler than he is, but the novel's main strength is a story within a story... This is another outstanding outing from a writer who consistently delivers more than his readers expect." - Publisher's Weekly
"The ever prolific King moves from his trademark horror into the realm of the hard-boiled noir thriller ... Murder most foul and mayhem most entertaining. Another worthy page-turner from a protean master." - Kirkus
"A noirish, unputdownable thriller that's also King's best book about his own craft since On Writing." - People Magazine
"A testament to its author's undimmed energy and confidence. His eye for detail, especially at the dreckier end of roadside culture, is sharp...lively and vivid." - The New York Times Book Review
"Among the many remarkable things about Stephen King is that he has yet to run out of ideas. Or put another way: He's very good at finding new ways to explore themes that have interested him his entire career... The passages where Billy writes his life story are some of the best in the book... It's when [Billy] finds an audience for his story that the book really starts to find its groove." - Rob Merrill, The Associated Press
